A thorough revision of the executive departments is necessary if government is to be both efficient and economical. There is plenty of good material in the Civil Service, and it will always be easy to obtain more. It is the system or want of system that is wrong. The next question is to provide or restore a more effective general control over expenditure and impose checks on the growing expenditure which has been so marked in recent years, even before the War. The ordinary machinery for dealing with and controlling expenditure is or should be fourfold. (1) The spending departments make definite estimates or are supposed to do so. Since the War, this has not been the rule. Of course, there are many cases in which it would have been absolutely impossible to let the items of proposed expenditure be published or discussed in the House of Commons; but, as soon as War requirements permit it, proper estimates should again be prepared and pressure put upon the departments to reduce them. At present the pressure is all the other way; the heads of the departments apparently like to have a large establishment as well as to extend their jurisdiction. It is not merely to give their department more importance and a claim therefore to higher salaries; sometimes it is the natural tendency of the vigorous man to enlarge the scope of his influence. _Boni judicis_, says the old maxim, _ampliare jurisdictionem_. ("It is characteristic of the good judge to extend his jurisdiction.") It would be a good thing if instead of estimates being laid directly before a Committee of the whole House of Commons, where some small item is often the subject of long and acrimonious debate and millions are passed without comment or consideration in a few minutes, the estimates of each department were fully considered as a whole by some small competent Committee of the House, uninfluenced by party feeling, and representatives of departments could be asked questions on their estimates. To compare small things with great, a committee of this kind has been found of the highest value in institutions where there are various departments requiring large expenditure. It is usually then felt by each person who sends in an estimate that it is to the credit of his department not to make claims for expenditure which cannot be justified. When the scale and character of the expenditure have been scrutinised and the estimate has been passed, it is much better to leave a very free hand as to the exact mode of expenditure. Outside control then becomes irritating, and is itself a cause of extravagance; it means more accounts, more correspondence, more consideration of papers.